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Robin J. Ely

Robin Ely is Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration and faculty chair of the HBS Gender Initiative. She conducts research on race and gender relations in organizations with a focus on organizational change, group dynamics, learning, conflict, power, and identity. Examples of her research include studies of men and masculinity on offshore oil platforms, the impact of racial diversity on retail bank performance, and the design and delivery of women’s leadership development programs. Professor Ely is presently conducting research on how women can be effective leaders in the face of gender stereotypes and the so-called “double bind” (the well-documented phenomenon whereby women leaders face a trade-off between being liked and being seen as competent); a study of how cultural beliefs about work and family limit both men’s and women’s ability to thrive professionally and lead whole, fulfilled lives; and a comprehensive, longitudinal study of HBS alumni career and life decisions. In her former role as Senior Associate Dean for Culture and Community, Professor Ely lead a culture change initiative at Harvard Business School to ensure that all members of the HBS community are able to thrive and reach their potential for advancing the School’s mission. Professor Ely has taught MBA courses in leadership, diversity, teams, and statistics and doctoral courses in gender and race relations and in field research methods; she has also taught in HBS’s executive education programs, including leadership programs designed specifically for women.

For the past several years, Professor Ely has maintained an active faculty affiliation at the Center for Gender in Organizations, Simmons Graduate School of Management, in Boston. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, she taught at Columbia University and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Professor Ely received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Yale University and her Bachelor’s degree from Smith College. She is a member of the Academy of Management, has served on numerous editorial boards of academic journals, and is a past associate editor of Administrative Science Quarterly.

Harvard Business School's Professor Robin Ely speaks April 4 at the W50 Summit. The summit was a two-day program focused on accelerating the advancement of women leaders who make a difference in the world.

Few women have succeeded in shattering the glass ceiling. Even those who have achieved phenomenal success in their respective fields have taken a few hard knocks along the way.One needs to look no further than Hilary Clinton and her recent quest to become US president. Touted as the more experienced of two Democrat candidates, she eventually conceded defeat to her charismatic opponent.

According to Robin Ely, a Professor of Organisational Behavior at Harvard Business School, women often end up in a 'double bind'.

This paper argues that learning in cross-race interactions is critical for work teams to realize performance benefits from racial diversity but that diversity is a liability when society's negative stereotypes about racial minorities' competence inhibit such interactions. We analyze two years of data from 496 retail bank branches to investigate racial asymmetries in the dynamics of team learning and their impact on the link between diversity and bottom-line performance. As expected, minorities' negative assessments of their team's learning environment precipitate a negative relationship between diversity and performance, irrespective of white teammates' assessments; only when both groups view the team's learning environment as supportive-implying that the team has successfully countered the negative effects of societal stereotypes on cross-race learning-is the relationship positive. We conclude that acknowledging the impact of societal asymmetries between racial groups, especially in regard to learning, can reorient research about the link between identity-group-based diversity and performance.

We conceptualize leadership development as identity work and show how subtle forms of gender bias in the culture and in organizations interfere with the identity work of women leaders. Based on this insight, we revisit traditional approaches to standard leadership topics, such as negotiations and leading change, as well as currently popular developmental tools, such as 360-degree feedback and networking; reinterpret them through the lens of women's experiences in organizations; and revise them in order to meet the particular challenges women face when transitioning into senior leadership. By framing leadership development as identity work, we reveal the gender dynamics involved in becoming a leader, offer a theoretical rationale for teaching leadership in women-only groups, and suggest design and delivery principles to increase the likelihood that women's leadership programs will help women advance into more senior leadership roles.